As today has been a rather good day I thought I might churn out a new Blog entry. I seem to be on a roll! So, before I go on my walk I thought I might write about a subject I know very, very well. You will also know it very well. Therefore it may (or may not) surprise you to learn of the dreadful level of stigma coating this subject like bathroom grime. Today's subject for the grilling is 'Being Single'. There are a lot of brackets. So prepare yourself...
Anyone who has ever walked down a High Street, went into a supermarket, a pub or a club, anyone who enjoys frequenting music festivals, the opera or dogging sites will have been confronted at some time or other by the bowel-looseningly grotesque sight of a couple. These pairings will no doubt inspire in you the intense desire to defecate in your pants just to replace the content and dreamy look in their eyes with one of shock and horror, to remind them with the greatest effort to offend that they are not outwith the gritty and smelly, sweaty and repugnant boundaries of human life. Because, of course, how dare they flaunt such obvious happiness in the faces of those without? How dare they pretend not to be simply a pair of insignificant molecules in the vast body of mankind?
Well, they dare to do these things with quite good reason. Quite the best reason I can possibly think of. Realistically at any rate. Were I to occupy a plane of complete irrationality (and who is to say I don't?) I suppose I could defy this reason and pin the collective unhappiness of the romantically marooned on the sheer, unbridled and self-defined superiority of the loved-up. I could claim that their merciless presence in society is as a drain into which the hopes and aspirations of the meek, the ugly and the diseased have been sucked with such thoroughness as to render the world grey and barren.
But that would be silly. No, that would be ignorant.
I may be silly, but I am certainly not (all that) ignorant! It is from opinions such as these, opinions from the mammoth egos of the bitterly single which create such a bad reputation for those bachelors and bachelorettes amongst us who live without such green poisonous bile forming in the back of their untouched mouths.
The single man is thought to be an emotionally stunted, socially handicapped outcast. Locked up in his studio flat he pours over volumes and volumes of military history books, role-playing manuals and fetish pornography. He works a nine hour day for a taller, more handsome man who drives to work in his BMW rather than take the bus. He resents everyone around him who is happy and content. Inside him burns the notion that he is infinitely better and more intelligent than anyone holding the hand of some willowy blonde in coloured stockings (which seem quite fashionable...I approve immensely!).
The single woman is much the same, minus (perhaps) the pornography. She abhors the willowy, coloured-stockinged blonde because she is prettier, slimmer, has perkier breasts and smells nicer than she does.
Or so we fool ourselves into thinking! The popular media portrays these downcasts far more today than they did before. The average man after all does not want to see Brad Pitt or that young fellow from that film about vampires who seems to be bringing back the 'pale look' (which I welcome wholeheartedly), they want to see David Mitchell, Jack Black, Simon Pegg or one of that lot. But in casting these men as the singles striving for romantic success with much more attractive young women the media rather misrepresents the single male demographic. There are many handsome young men out there who are single, likewise there are many attractive young women yet to be courted...if people still do that.
There is a fine line between patronising the single faction of society with tales of woefully unfortunate individuals scaling Olympian heights of romantic success and simply making them feel God-awful by representing them with a strapping six-footer with bronzed chest and (artificially) stuffed boxer shorts (for either gender!). I prefer the former, being the sensitive fool who rather likes to see the underdog win. I'm sure Brad Pitt is a perfectly lovely gentleman. I have no evidence to suggest otherwise and what reason does he have to be otherwise.
But even if we can reach a conclusion as to which is the best way to cinematically portray single people (and why would we? It is a pretty inane topic...) there remains the fact that the very template on which these films are based is fundamentally flawed.
The algorithm, if you like, is well known:
1. Boy/Girl lives alone and is miserable.
2. There occurs a CHANCE MEETING and Boy/Girl falls in love with better looking Girl/Boy.
3. Boy/Girl commences RELATIONSHIP with Girl/Boy. His/Her life is SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER as a result.
4. Boy/Girl causes everything to scramble into a terrible MESS.
5. Everything is resolved and everybody is HAPPY for EVER and EVER.
The fact is that being single is not necessarily such an awful thing. I rather enjoy it. I haven't known anything different but to be frank I'm in no rush to ruin a perfectly nice set-up. If I wasn't an eligible bachelor then I couldn't be such an absurd drunkard. Without this defining feature, I would soon lose my immunity to most strains of social embarrassment and I would heap yet more worry onto my already overflowing plate. I would suddenly become aware that, since I often forget to shave in the morning, I go through my day with irritating patches of dark hair sprouting from my chin, upper lip and whatever you call the place where sideburns live. I'd feel compelled not to play computer games, to watch my weight for fear that my better half would find someone trimmer despite the fact that, obviously, there would be less of them to cuddle.
A girl I know was heard to remark that she was "offended" by the inclusion of the word "cunt" in a Restoration poem in an English lecture earlier this week. If I can't randomly throw out words like "cunt", "fuck", "cock", "bollocks" and "buggery-shit-wank" then is my life truly worth living?
That may be a generalization about women, but my goodness, what if I can't be myself? Oscar Wilde said "Be yourself; everybody else is already taken". Wise words we should all take to heart. And certainly in a proper relationship, one which works, I could follow Wilde's advice and use aforementioned expletives until I no longer knew where or who I was.
So I'm not entirely keen on taking the risk of losing the relative bliss of bachelorhood for some linguistically prudish ice-queen. Therein lies the problem. There is nothing inherently wrong with being single. It isn't nearly as lonely and miserable as many would have you believe. It can be lonely, but it is a companionable sort of loneliness. However, if one ever does want to venture out from the cosy realms of comfort, the harsh wilderness of romance can cause some to adopt views one could consider bitter or cynical.
So, is one the loneliest number? I think it depends on what you are looking to get out of life in any given time-frame. Right now, for instance, I'm simply not bothered. I enjoy the relaxing knowledge that nobody is that dependant on what is essentially my limited ability to express feelings and emotions. If someone could muster attraction for such an awkward, self-conscious and obsessively polite young man as me then I'm sure I would change my mind if, of course, I returned her (probably poorly allocated) affections. Not being nearly as articulate when speaking as I am when writing I think that, at the moment at least, I would naturally find the whole thing as confusing as I find daylight saving time.
I hope I've illuminated the dark corridors of loneliness for you even just a little bit. After all, a dark corridor is only frightening because it plays host to unknown variables. By shedding light upon such a monstrously intimidating place it becomes much less of a threat...unless said corridors are full of rapists in Nazi uniform. But that hilarious anecdote is for another day...
Jamie
Anyone who has ever walked down a High Street, went into a supermarket, a pub or a club, anyone who enjoys frequenting music festivals, the opera or dogging sites will have been confronted at some time or other by the bowel-looseningly grotesque sight of a couple. These pairings will no doubt inspire in you the intense desire to defecate in your pants just to replace the content and dreamy look in their eyes with one of shock and horror, to remind them with the greatest effort to offend that they are not outwith the gritty and smelly, sweaty and repugnant boundaries of human life. Because, of course, how dare they flaunt such obvious happiness in the faces of those without? How dare they pretend not to be simply a pair of insignificant molecules in the vast body of mankind?
Well, they dare to do these things with quite good reason. Quite the best reason I can possibly think of. Realistically at any rate. Were I to occupy a plane of complete irrationality (and who is to say I don't?) I suppose I could defy this reason and pin the collective unhappiness of the romantically marooned on the sheer, unbridled and self-defined superiority of the loved-up. I could claim that their merciless presence in society is as a drain into which the hopes and aspirations of the meek, the ugly and the diseased have been sucked with such thoroughness as to render the world grey and barren.
But that would be silly. No, that would be ignorant.
I may be silly, but I am certainly not (all that) ignorant! It is from opinions such as these, opinions from the mammoth egos of the bitterly single which create such a bad reputation for those bachelors and bachelorettes amongst us who live without such green poisonous bile forming in the back of their untouched mouths.
The single man is thought to be an emotionally stunted, socially handicapped outcast. Locked up in his studio flat he pours over volumes and volumes of military history books, role-playing manuals and fetish pornography. He works a nine hour day for a taller, more handsome man who drives to work in his BMW rather than take the bus. He resents everyone around him who is happy and content. Inside him burns the notion that he is infinitely better and more intelligent than anyone holding the hand of some willowy blonde in coloured stockings (which seem quite fashionable...I approve immensely!).
The single woman is much the same, minus (perhaps) the pornography. She abhors the willowy, coloured-stockinged blonde because she is prettier, slimmer, has perkier breasts and smells nicer than she does.
Or so we fool ourselves into thinking! The popular media portrays these downcasts far more today than they did before. The average man after all does not want to see Brad Pitt or that young fellow from that film about vampires who seems to be bringing back the 'pale look' (which I welcome wholeheartedly), they want to see David Mitchell, Jack Black, Simon Pegg or one of that lot. But in casting these men as the singles striving for romantic success with much more attractive young women the media rather misrepresents the single male demographic. There are many handsome young men out there who are single, likewise there are many attractive young women yet to be courted...if people still do that.
There is a fine line between patronising the single faction of society with tales of woefully unfortunate individuals scaling Olympian heights of romantic success and simply making them feel God-awful by representing them with a strapping six-footer with bronzed chest and (artificially) stuffed boxer shorts (for either gender!). I prefer the former, being the sensitive fool who rather likes to see the underdog win. I'm sure Brad Pitt is a perfectly lovely gentleman. I have no evidence to suggest otherwise and what reason does he have to be otherwise.
But even if we can reach a conclusion as to which is the best way to cinematically portray single people (and why would we? It is a pretty inane topic...) there remains the fact that the very template on which these films are based is fundamentally flawed.
The algorithm, if you like, is well known:
1. Boy/Girl lives alone and is miserable.
2. There occurs a CHANCE MEETING and Boy/Girl falls in love with better looking Girl/Boy.
3. Boy/Girl commences RELATIONSHIP with Girl/Boy. His/Her life is SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER as a result.
4. Boy/Girl causes everything to scramble into a terrible MESS.
5. Everything is resolved and everybody is HAPPY for EVER and EVER.
The fact is that being single is not necessarily such an awful thing. I rather enjoy it. I haven't known anything different but to be frank I'm in no rush to ruin a perfectly nice set-up. If I wasn't an eligible bachelor then I couldn't be such an absurd drunkard. Without this defining feature, I would soon lose my immunity to most strains of social embarrassment and I would heap yet more worry onto my already overflowing plate. I would suddenly become aware that, since I often forget to shave in the morning, I go through my day with irritating patches of dark hair sprouting from my chin, upper lip and whatever you call the place where sideburns live. I'd feel compelled not to play computer games, to watch my weight for fear that my better half would find someone trimmer despite the fact that, obviously, there would be less of them to cuddle.
A girl I know was heard to remark that she was "offended" by the inclusion of the word "cunt" in a Restoration poem in an English lecture earlier this week. If I can't randomly throw out words like "cunt", "fuck", "cock", "bollocks" and "buggery-shit-wank" then is my life truly worth living?
That may be a generalization about women, but my goodness, what if I can't be myself? Oscar Wilde said "Be yourself; everybody else is already taken". Wise words we should all take to heart. And certainly in a proper relationship, one which works, I could follow Wilde's advice and use aforementioned expletives until I no longer knew where or who I was.
So I'm not entirely keen on taking the risk of losing the relative bliss of bachelorhood for some linguistically prudish ice-queen. Therein lies the problem. There is nothing inherently wrong with being single. It isn't nearly as lonely and miserable as many would have you believe. It can be lonely, but it is a companionable sort of loneliness. However, if one ever does want to venture out from the cosy realms of comfort, the harsh wilderness of romance can cause some to adopt views one could consider bitter or cynical.
So, is one the loneliest number? I think it depends on what you are looking to get out of life in any given time-frame. Right now, for instance, I'm simply not bothered. I enjoy the relaxing knowledge that nobody is that dependant on what is essentially my limited ability to express feelings and emotions. If someone could muster attraction for such an awkward, self-conscious and obsessively polite young man as me then I'm sure I would change my mind if, of course, I returned her (probably poorly allocated) affections. Not being nearly as articulate when speaking as I am when writing I think that, at the moment at least, I would naturally find the whole thing as confusing as I find daylight saving time.
I hope I've illuminated the dark corridors of loneliness for you even just a little bit. After all, a dark corridor is only frightening because it plays host to unknown variables. By shedding light upon such a monstrously intimidating place it becomes much less of a threat...unless said corridors are full of rapists in Nazi uniform. But that hilarious anecdote is for another day...
Jamie
